On the first Sunday of the year I do a sermon on prayer. Why? Because prayer is massively important in our lives as individuals and as a church. Because it’s easy to assume prayer is understood and practiced when in many cases it’s not. And because prayer is a consistent struggle for me! I more than anyone need the regular reminder and challenge to pray.
Besides the Word of God, is there anything more important than prayer? Think of it like this. If God’s work in the world, in our church, and in your life is like a fire, the Bible is the wood and prayer is the gasoline, or lighter fluid. These two things are the fuel that drives God’s work forward, and when the Spirit of God strikes the match, the fire burns hot and bright. God’s work advances through his word and our prayers, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We often think that doing many things is how God’s work advances. But activity without prayer is like a car without gas. The engine is there but it can’t run. As Oswald Chambers famously said, “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.”[1]
I love this quote because it says that prayer isn’t just a means to an end, but is an end in itself, or something we must do for its own sake. But I also love this quote because it says prayer is “work.” Before prayer is anything else, it is work, hard work. And as you’ve probably been told, anything in life worth doing is difficult. Meaningful things, important things, life-changing things, kingdom-advancing things, are almost always hard things.
So when someone asks you, “What is prayer?”, the first thing you say is, “Prayer is work!” That’s the main point of today’s message, that prayer is work, or more specifically, prayer is a duty and a discipline. It’s something we must do and must keep on doing.
This sermon isn’t meant to make you feel bad if you struggle with prayer or to massage your ego if you’re doing great in prayer. It’s meant to challenge you and encourage you. It’s easy to shame ourselves about our prayer lives, to beat ourselves up about prayer. And it’s because prayer is hard! If it was easy, we wouldn’t need yearly sermons on it and we’d do it effortlessly.
So you’re not crazy or weird for feeling like prayer is really hard work – you’re feeling what we all feel. This sermon is meant to, on the one hand, validate those feelings while, on the other hand, challenge you to push through them to willingly embrace the hard work of prayer.
Prayer is something we must do and must keep on doing. But we won’t do it if we aren’t driven to do it. So today we’ll see the duty of prayer, the discipline of prayer, and the drive of prayer.
First, let’s consider the duty of prayer. What I mean by “duty” is that it’s something we should do. Prayer isn’t an optional add-on to the Christian life. It’s not for super-spiritual people. It’s not a self-help technique or skill to add to your resume. It’s not something you do if you can squeeze it into your schedule. It’s not something you get out of because you think you’re not any good at it, or because you don’t know what to say.
Prayer is the duty of every Christian, and church. Prayer is something we must, ought, should do. Prayer is something God commands us to do. You may be surprised how many times God tells us to pray in the Bible. Here’s a sampling:
Matthew 6:5, 7, 9, “When you pray…when you pray…Pray then like this.”
Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Luke 18:1, “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” (Referring to the persistent widow who keeps “bothering” God for justice.)
1 Timothy 2:1-2, “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.”
1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”
Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Isaiah 55:6, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.”
Ephesians 5:13, 18, “Take up the whole armor of God…praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.”
James 5:16, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
Hebrews 4:16, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Romans 12:12, “Be constant in prayer.”
Colossians 4:2, “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”
Jude 20-21, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.”
1 Timothy 2:8, “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.”
Psalm 50:15, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”
God calls his people to call on him, or to pray. Commanding this one time would be sufficient for our obedience. But that the Bible is full of commands to pray must mean that this is something we cannot miss. We can’t excuse it away or dismiss it. It’s not optional, it’s essential. If it were one verse, we could explain it away by doing interpretive gymnastics and saying that it was only meant for those people back then. But the command to pray is all over the Bible.
It’s especially pointed in the New Testament letters to the churches. Based on how many explicit commands the apostles give to pray, they’d probably say that they’re not sure how someone could claim to belong to God if prayer wasn’t a consistent part of their life. Prayer was so central to the earliest Christian’s understanding that not doing it wasn’t conceivable.
In 1990, in the first year of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, the church Tim and Kathy Keller planted in New York City, Keller said this to the young church in a sermon:
“Your prayer life is the litmus test for your relationship with God. How do you know if you’re really a Christian? How do you know? That’s a hard question, but I’ll tell you this. Your prayer life is the best way to find out. Don’t look at whether you witness day and night on the street corner. Don’t look at whether you’re a moral person. Don’t look at whether you go to church. Don’t look at even how much you know your Bible. Because, you realize, other people see (those things) – and so it’s possible to be motivated out of a desire to look good. It’s possible to have an external kind of religion and be motivated by environmental factors. But only God sees when you pray. As a result, it’s your prayer life that tells you what you’re really made of spiritually.”[2]
To be clear, he’s not saying that prayer saves you. He is saying that those who’re saved will have a growing prayer life. He’s saying that a prayerless Christian is a contradiction in terms. So much of our Christian life is outward and so it’s easy to be motivated by pride and wanting to be seen a certain way. But the miracle of the gospel is a new heart, and a new heart wants to pray. This is why Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne said, “A man is what he is on his knees – nothing more and nothing less.”[3]
Do you see the duty to pray? Do you see that your prayer life is serious business? Another writer says this, “The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin…or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this, or its punishment…Not to want to pray, then, is the sin behind sin.”[4] He’s saying that it’s not difficult to discern whether someone is consistently spending time with the Lord in prayer. Prayer doesn’t save us, but it does change us. It’s one of God’s ordained means to change us. This is why it’s a duty.
But we all struggle to pray. Why don’t we pray? Three reasons, at least. First, we’re busy, overwhelmed with so many things, and rushed all the time. Spurgeon somewhere said that the busier his day was the more time he made for prayer because he knew he couldn’t do all that needed to be done without the Lord’s help.
Second, we don’t pray because we’re content with an intellectual faith. Some of us, because of our temperament or the way we were raised, elevate experience over theology, while others elevate theology over experience. But we need both theology and experience, or as Matt Smethurst says, “experience that is theological and theology that is experiential. What God has joined together, let no one separate.”[5] God wants us to worship him in spirit and truth. He gave us the Word and prayer. He wants us to know and enjoy him. It’s easy to fall into one ditch or the other, to assume that since you know a lot about theology you therefore have a close relationship with God. But if you’re not consistently praying, you won’t have a close relationship with God. No relationship grows without time and presence.
And third, we struggle with prayer because of pride. Prayerlessness is often the result of hidden pride, or the unspoken and often unnoticed assumption that you don’t think you actually need the Lord for everything. Prayer is a declaration of dependence. If we aren’t growing in prayer, the delusion of self-sufficiency is growing in us.
Think of it this way. Imagine you live with someone and they basically never talk to you. Maybe they say hi when they see you and text when something goes wrong, but they basically ignore your presence. What if, when you mention this to them, they said, “Yeah, I just don’t get much out of talking with you. I find it kind of boring actually and I’ve got so many things to do, so I just don’t make time for it.” What would you conclude about the nature of your relationship with this roommate? You’d think they have no desire to actually get to know you or hear your heart, that they only want a relationship that’s transactional. And frankly, you’d think they were a really rude person.
“Rude” of course is far too weak a word to describe our failure to consistently engage our Maker, Sustainer, and Redeemer in prayer. The One to whom we owe our every breath deserves to be engaged. This is why prayer is a duty: we are not God, we depend on God for everything, therefore we must pray.
Prayer is a duty, but it’s also, secondly, a discipline. It’s something we must do and something we must keep on doing. Prayer must be persevering. It must be something we constantly pursue.
This is what Paul has in mind in Romans 15:30, “I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.” And this is what Epaphras was doing for the Colossian Christians: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God” (Col. 4:12).
Prayer is a struggle, a striving, a fighting, a grappling with God. It doesn’t come easy and it’s not easy to sustain. So, like Paul and Epaphras, we have to commit to the struggle of prayer. We have to stick with it through all the ups and downs of our feelings and moods and busyness.
Prayer requires discipline because it’s always hard work. It’s often hard just to start praying. One writer says, “When those hours of the day come in which we should be having our prayer-sessions with God, it often appears as though everything has entered into a conspiracy to prevent it.”[6]
It’s hard to start praying and it’s also hard to concentrate in prayer. Our thoughts go back and forth between God and all the stuff we have to do. Many times I catch myself not praying but ruminating over something, thinking and analyzing and letting my thoughts spiral and catastrophize a situation, rather than simply praying.
There certainly are times of peace and intimacy with the Lord through prayer, but no Christian ever outgrows the need to struggle, to persevere, in prayer. Prayer is a duty and a discipline.
So we know we must pray and we know we must keep on praying. We know we should pray, but if you’re like me, you feel overwhelmed by all this. A sermon like this can sound like “just do more and try harder.” But how can we do this? Where will the drive come from?
To find the drive to pray, let’s go to the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt. 26:36-46). What do we find here?
We find Jesus overwhelmed with emotion (vv. 37-38). He was broken over what lay before him. He was in every kind of agony, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and physical. The intensity of this experience had visible effects on his body, as he sweat drops of blood.
We also find him being brutally honest about his desire, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (v. 39). Yet he’s also totally submissive to God’s plan, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (v. 39). And he prays this way repeatedly, saying the same thing three times (v. 44).
So Jesus doesn’t repress his feelings but he isn’t ruled by them either. Why is he so overcome with emotion? And why is he so resolved to obey God? For us.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus struggled in prayer for us. He knew how high the cost of our salvation was, and he chose to pay it. Verse 42, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” He submitted to the will of God to drink the cup we should drink.
What does this have to do with prayer? In the Garden, Jesus struggled in prayer for us. When we understand the agony Jesus endured for us, in the Garden and on the cross, we’ll want to struggle in prayer to him.
When we realize what Jesus has done for us, we find that we start wanting to pray. When we realize the agony he went through to justify us and adopt us, to not only acquit us in God’s courtroom but to also welcome us into God’s living room, we’ll want to be with him in prayer.
When we see Jesus struggling in prayer for us, we’ll struggle in prayer for him. When we see him striving for us, we’ll strive for him. When we see him in agony because he loves us and wants us to know the embrace of the Father, we’ll understand that the duty and the discipline of prayer are more than religious rules. We’ll see them as gifts of grace. We’ll see them as an opportunity and an invitation to be embraced by our Father. Do you see that?
[1]Quoted in Jason Mandryk, Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation, 7th ed. (Colorado Springs, CO: Biblica Publishing, 2010), 301.
[2]Quoted in Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2025), 120.
[3]Quoted in Mandryk, 301.
[4]Peter T. Forsyth, quoted in Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 121-2.
[6]Quoted in Keller, 123.
